The Brief

This month, a two-part documentary on the history of Black television, Seen & Heard was released on HBO Max.

It comes at a tense moment for the genre.

In April, CBS sparked backlash after canceling three Black-led shows in one day: spinoffs of The Equalizer starring Queen Latifah and The Neighborhood featuring Cedric the Entertainer, along with Damon Wayans Sr. and Jr.’s comedy Poppa’s House.

Sharon Waxman, who is the founder and editor of the entertainment news site The Wrap, summarized the moment we're in for the New York Times last month. Its title: “Hollywood is ‘Hot, Horny and White’ Again.”

Her take: “The entertainment industry is nothing if not finely attuned to the social and cultural signals that affect the box office. ... The pendulum that swung all the way left after the killing of George Floyd in 2020, with among other things the installation of DEI leaders at the studios, started to go the other way in 2023.”

Giselle Bailey, a documentary filmmaker and director, had a front row seat to that swing while making Seen & Heard. Even as she was putting the documentary together, shows like Rap Sh!t, a comedy series following two women MCs, and Random Acts of Flyness, a surrealist sketch comedy show led by Terence Nance, got the ax.

How did we get here?

“I  think we're in another moment …” Bailey said, pausing while she searched for a tactful way to put it. “I'm going to say ‘of rebirth.'”

“I think it is very hard right now. Opportunities are rather limited,” she said. “And also, I see from studying this history that this is another time of ingenuity. And I feel that with my peers — other Black filmmakers — are really thinking about, ‘How do I wanna tell this story? Where can I distribute it? How do I do it myself? How do we partner? How do we collaborate?'”

Giselle Bailey and Issa Rae speak onstage following the "Seen & Heard" premiere during the 2025 SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas this March.

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Seen & Heard, produced by Issa Rae, asks those questions in interviews with icons who have shaped the television landscape, including Oprah, Tyler Perry, Shonda Rimes, Debbie Allen, Rae herself and and many more.

The backstory 

The first episode of Seen & Heard highlights the history of Black entertainment as early as the Chitlin circuit of the 1930s, an informal network of venues where Black musicians, comedians and other entertainers performed for Black audiences during Jim Crow era segregation.

These venues were mostly in the eastern, southern and upper Midwest U.S., but the story of Black television takes place here in L.A., in the world of board rooms and sound stages from the '50s to today.

“LA is the central hub, the womb, the battleground of the story that we're telling,” Bailey said.

Bailey noticed there was a cycle to Black TV There would be pockets of time when Black shows were popular, like in the '70s, when the prolific producer and writer Norman Lear created and championed sitcoms like Sanford and Son, Good Times and The Jeffersons — and then those pockets would close.

How the Black TV Renaissance of the '90s and 2000s waned

UPN's ``Girlfriends" featured, from left, Jill Jones, Persia White, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Golden Brooks.

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To understand this cycle,  Seen & Heard explores what happened in the '90s and early 2000s, when there was a huge renaissance of Black shows on TV.

“In the 90s, 'UPN (United Paramount Network) and WB (Warner Brothers) had many of the Black shows that come to define the era,” Bailey said.

Shows like Girlfriends, Moesha and Sister Sister, which amassed large audiences and helped their respective networks establish their voice and loyal viewership. But then…

“At a certain point in early 2000s, UPN and the WB merged and created the CW. During that acquisition, they started moving to what often is called a ‘mainstream appeal,’” Bailey said. “And so that leaves a lot of things behind, including things that are considered a creative risk — that tends to be voices of people of color.”

Throughout the aughts, CW became known for shows like Gossip Girl rather than Moesha. In Seen & Heard, Ralph Farquhar, co-creator of Moesha said, "Our shows have systematically been used to pump networks since we've been on TV. To pump up the ratings, to pump up the network. And then when they get what they need, they let it go.”

Farquhar also called out Fox — another network — that started running In Living Color, a comedy sketch show starring Keenan Ivory Wayans, in 1990, “until, one day when they bought NFL football and they decided to get rid of everybody. Football meant white males to them. They cancelled everything Black 'cause they considered the Black audience a downscale demographic."

“It is a bit of whiplash,” Bailey said. “Because the most popular shows went from being very Black to being very not in a span of just a couple of years.”

What to do with a fickle Hollywood system? 

Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry attend the "Sidney" Premiere during the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival in 2022. Both are highly influential in the entertainment industry.

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Bailey noticed a theme emerge in her interviews for the documentary: Black creatives feeling it was necessary to navigate or bypass the studio system.

“There's controlling how something's getting made, which community is making it, how is that reflected on the screen? […] All of those things are really rooted in having real control of the thing. And the best way to do that is to own the content,” Bailey said.

Tyler Perry's studio — which he takes viewers on a tour of in Seen and Heard has multiple sound stages named after legendary Black performers like Denzel Washington, Whoopi Goldberg and Sidney Poitier. Oprah also talks in the documentary about the importance of owning her own network: OWN, the Oprah Winfrey network.

A push to create or contribute to a system that is not bankrolled by white executives, extends beyond billionaire industry tycoons. After Terence Nance’s Random Acts of Flyness was canceled, Nance came together with other Black creatives in Baltimore to open Lalibela, a space with sound stages and equipment where Black creators can make their own productions without waiting for a studio green light.

“Terence’s Lalibela is really exciting to me,” Bailey said. “Those are the kinds of projects that I believe [are] going to create another kind of renaissance.”

Watch the full interview below.

In just four days, the Los Angeles Official Martin Luther King Day Parade will take over South L.A.

The LA Local recently spoke with Sabra Wady, the parade’s lead organizer, who said this year’s parade will look much the same as recent years.

So, whether you’re attending the parade or watching it on TV, here’s everything you need to know about Monday’s parade:

The procession will begin at 10 a.m., with ABC7 set to begin a broadcast at 11 a.m.

What time does the parade start? How can I watch? Is anything happening after?

Wady said the best place to catch the parade in person is the intersection of Crenshaw Boulevard and Martin Luther King Jr. King Boulevard, or “camera corner,” where the parade will culminate and organizers are planning a live preshow. Bleacher seats, though, will be limited.

The Metro K Line runs directly to the intersection, dropping people off at the Martin Luther King Jr. Metro station.

Onlookers can also post up along the parade route with folding chairs and other self-arranged seating, Wady said.

The parade broadcast will run until 1 p.m., but Wady said the procession is expected to keep going until mid-afternoon.

“After the cameras stop rolling, it’s the people’s parade,” Wady said.

LA City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Councilmembers Curren Price and Heather Hutt – who represent council districts 8, 9 and 10, respectively — will organize the annual MLK Freedom Festival in the Leimert Park Plaza from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

What route will the parade take?

The route will remain the same, running down King Boulevard from Western Avenue to Crenshaw Boulevard before turning south down Crenshaw and heading to Leimert Park. Much of the route will be closed to traffic overnight before the parade.

More than 150 groups, including bands, floats, horseback riders and marchers, will trek down the boulevard. Wady said organizers cut off new sign-ups weeks ago in order to keep the parade manageable.

What will road closures look like?

Colin Sweeney, a spokesperson for the LA Department of Transportation, said in an email that the department will close off traffic down the main parade route overnight.

Here are the roads that will be closed to all vehicles for the duration of the parade and festival.

• King Boulevard from Vermont Avenue to Crenshaw Boulevard 
• Crenshaw Boulevard from King Boulevard to 48th Street
• Leimert Boulevard from 8th Avenue to Leimert Park 
• Degnan Avenue between 43rd Street and Leimert Park

Sweeney said only residents will be allowed to drive into the band of neighborhoods directly along the length of the parade route. That includes the blocks from 39th Street to 42nd Street along King Boulevard and the blocks between McClung Drive and Victoria Avenue along the Crenshaw closure.

The transportation department will allow traffic to cross the parade route at major intersections — including Western Avenue, Arlington Avenue and Stocker Street — but those crossings will be shut down at 10 a.m. All closed roads will stay blocked off until the parade and festival wrap up and transportation officials determine crowds have sufficiently dispersed, Sweeney said.

Wady said the parade is expected to peter out around mid-afternoon. The festival at Leimert Park Plaza is scheduled to end at 5 p.m.

Vehicles parked in the parade assembly area, parade route and disbanding area will be subject to impound or tickets, Sweeney wrote.

Topline:

By the numbers: Film and television shoot days totaled 4,625 in the final three months of 2025, up 5.1% in that timeframe. But overall last year, there were 19,694 shoot days, which is down 16.1% from 2024's total of 23.480.

Why it matters: Production in Los Angeles has been slow to rebound since the COVID-19 pandemic and the Hollywood writers and actors strikes in 2023. There is also increased competition from other states that offer appealing film tax credits and other incentives for productions that decide to take their shoot outside of California. This summer, Gov. Gavin Newsom expanded California's Film and TV Tax Credit Program in an effort to lure productions back to the Golden State.

What's next: Film L.A.'s Phil Sokoloski says that many of the productions approved under the expanded tax credit program are just now getting underway, and he hopes the industry will start to see the effects of not only the tax incentive expansion in 2026, but also L.A. Mayor Karen Bass' directives to streamline the permitting and shooting process in the city.

In L.A., there is no shortage of events to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year.

Since 1986, the federal holiday is observed on the third Monday of January to honor the life and legacy of the Civil Rights leader.

California African American Museum

The California African American Museum is hosting a King Day scavenger hunt on Sunday from 2 to 3 p.m. On Monday, it is hosting an all-day event honoring King that will culminate with a performance by the Inner City Youth Orchestra of L.A., which is billed as the largest majority Black youth orchestra in the country.

Orchestra at Skirball

The orchestra will also perform at the Skirball Cultural Center on Saturday evening. The free event is already at capacity, but you can try your luck by signing up for the waitlist here. Earlier Saturday, the orchestra will join the Santa Monica Symphony for its annual MLK concert.

Parades and celebrations

Cedric the Entertainer will be the grand marshal of this year’s official L.A. MLK Day Parade on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard between Western and Crenshaw avenues on Monday. If you’re looking for a parade earlier in the weekend, you can head to Long Beach’s MLK Day parade on Saturday. Also on Saturday is a celebration of King’s legacy at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Culver City.

Volunteer opportunities

In 1994, President Bill Clinton officially decreed MLK Day as a day of service. If you’re looking for opportunities to volunteer, grab free tickets to Monday’s MLK Day Volunteer Festival at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum.

Free access to state parks

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday that more than 200 California state parks will be free to enter on Monday. The move comes after the Trump administration eliminated MLK Day and Juneteenth from the list of days when it’s free to access national parks. There are 12 free state parks on the list in L.A. County, including Los Angeles and Will Rogers State Historic Parks, as well as Topanga and Malibu Creek State Parks. See the full list here.

A 2017 Los Angeles Times article tells the tragic story of Lai Hang, a terminally ill woman who killed her 18-year-old son George, who’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

It’s a carefully reported story by journalist Frank Shyong about a family, about the shame and stigma that can surround mental illness in Asian American communities, and how media portrayals of people with mental disorders can perpetuate harmful misconceptions.

So when Shyong was first approached about the idea of adapting the story he wrote into a narrative film, he had some “very intense” concerns about whether a film would get the story right.

But after conversations with the filmmakers, and thinking through the potential value of telling fictionalized stories based on real-life events, Shyong says, “ I think I realized that my story was in a lot of ways incomplete.”

Nine years later, the film, titled Rosemead, is finished. Directed by Eric Lin and written by Marilyn Fu, the film stars Lucy Liu as Irene, a character based on Hang, and Lawrence Shou as Joe, who’s based on George.

And Shyong, who is credited as an executive producer and served as a consultant on the film, says “it’s sort of completing the circle a little bit” — fleshing out Hang and George as “full 360 degree human beings” and giving glimpses of how their story might have ended differently.

Reporting on trauma in Asian American communities

Back in 2015, when the events depicted in Rosemead happened, the breaking news coverage revealed the basics of what was known at the time — that a woman had fatally shot her son in a Rosemead motel and turned herself in.

“ I think a lot of people probably realized there was more story there,” Shyong says. But the only person who knew the details, Hang’s longtime friend Ping Chong, had declined to talk to the media.

Still, Shyong kept following up because the court records hinted at a story that he thought should be told.

The court records revealed that Hang had been dying of cancer, and that Chong continued to visit her after she turned herself in, performing Buddhist rituals for her.

“Just knowing those two facts,” Shyong says, “and knowing Asian American families, and how complete and terrifying the sense of responsibility that a parent can feel toward a child, I just thought there's gotta be something there.”

He would visit Chong’s shop, a traditional Chinese pharmacy, leaving notes for her and talking to her about why he wanted to know more. And he gained her trust.

 ”You just have to say, ‘This is [the] story I think is here. And do you think that story is true? And if so, can you help me tell it?’ And that's all I did,” Shyong says. “I think that's all any journalist ever does.”

It’s a story that Shyong says he would come to learn is more common than many may expect.   “When you are a caregiver in these communities,” Shyong says, “you can find and name a tragic story like this in probably every zip code.”

How filmmaking and journalism can complement each other

Shyong’s article ends with this poignant quote from Chong, about her friend: “People will only know her as the mother who killed her son [...] But she was more.”

The piece itself goes a long way toward dispelling Chong’s concern, including details about Hang’s life — that she was a talented graphic designer, that she was “beautiful, smart and ambitious,” that she’d lost her husband to cancer, and that she deeply cared about her son.

But “in this case fiction,” Shyong says, “could give closure to characters in a way that I couldn't in reality. It could tell the fullness of this family story.”

The film shows Liu’s character Irene having fun with her son at the beach, and joining his therapy sessions at the urging of a psychiatrist, despite being visibly uncomfortable doing so.

It shows George (Joe in the film) with his friends, who come to visit him after he has an intense schizophrenic episode at school.

The sound design gives a sense of what it’s like to experience schizophrenia, and a part of the film where Joe runs away shows how quickly a boy with a mother and friends who care about him can become an unhoused person who someone might fear on the street.

Ultimately, the film ends on a note of hope, which grew out of something that Shyong learned from Chong after the article was published. In a way that he couldn’t do in print, “It added parts to the story that I wanted to see depicted.”